Phyllis Galembo, Ekpokang Masquerade, Calabar South, Nigeria, 2005. Process: Ilfochrome. Image courtesy of the artist and Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

ROCHESTER, NY.- Artist Phyllis Galembo has traveled extensively to photograph visually stunning costumes worn by traditional priests and priestesses, carnival performers, Halloween revelers, and Haitian vodoo practitioners. Her recent photographic portraits of masqueraders from West Africa are featured in a an exhibition at George Eastman House this summer, titled West African Masquerade: Photographs by Phyllis Galembo, on view through Sept. 28.

West African Masquerade features 34 large-format color photographs, taken on location between 2004 and 2006 in the West African countries of Nigeria, Burkina Faso, and Benin. Galembo has crossed cultural boundaries and earned national recognition for her work. Art in America has praised her combination of a “careful, almost ethnographic observation with a deep sense of mystical wonder,” and the New York Times recognized the “dignity, conviction, and formal power” in her photographs.

Galembo’s work has been driven by curiosities and questions such as, “What happens when we put on a mask and inhabit a different persona?” and “How does ritual dress contribute to our connection to spirituality?” Galembo considers herself an artist, not an anthropologist, and her decisions about color, light, and background have more to do with aesthetic desires than ethnographic precision. She is focused on the invention and expressive craft of costume-making and the potential for transformation that wearing such garments allows.

The elaborate costumes featured are often made of inexpensive materials such as raffia, carved wood, coarse fabrics, crocheted yarns, body paint, flowers, grasses, leaves, and sticks. The outfits run a gamut of dramatic designs and shapes, from striped-knit bodysuits to appliquéd fabric costumes as voluminous as pup tents. One head-to-toe costume from Benin sports dozens of long, fluttering strips of spotted and striped fur; another, from Burkina Faso, looks like a walking sunflower, its wearer hidden under a cascade of fresh green leaves. A ghostly white-clad figure from Nigeria is topped with a grimacing painted-wood skull worn like a hat.

Created for festivities and ceremonies such as weddings and burials, initiations, chiefs’ coronations, and holidays like Christmas and the New Year, the costumes can be worn to disguise anyone, from a grown man or woman to a child. The subjects range from adults to teenagers, but Galembo does not know the identity of the individual beneath each mask. This mystery lies at the heart of her interest in costuming and masking — acts that allow the wearer to become something else, to change gender, or species, or even into spirits.

“They have intentionally transformed themselves into something exotic, charged, even frightening,” said musician/photographer David Byrne, who has exhibited at Eastman House and described Galembo’s work on his blog. “There is combined a long deep legacy of dress-up for masquerade, for carnival, for possession by the gods combined with personal creativity and ingenuity. These are not people in their ordinary dress — they are intentionally fantastic, shocking, wild.”

Upon arriving in each country, Galembo meets a translator and negotiator who accompanies her to different locations. He introduces her to village elders in each community who in turn provide permissions and help coordinate times when masqueraders can be photographed. The urge to dress up in costumes, whether for celebration or ceremony, is a phenomenon that crosses cultures and frees the human spirit in ways that intrigue Galembo.

Complementing the photographs on view, throughout the gallery will be African artifacts, including masks and sculptures. West African Masquerade is part of a three-exhibition series titled “Africas,” which focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, on view at Eastman House this summer.

West African Masquerade is generously funded by HCR, Rotenberg & Company, Bergmann Associates, and Bruce Bates.

As a child, Phyllis Galembo enjoyed dressing up for Halloween and Purim, fascinated by “how masquerade becomes magical.” She earned a master of fine arts degree in photography and printmaking from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1977, and has taught photography at the University at Albany since 1978. Her numerous books include Vodou: Visions and Voices of Haiti (1998) and Divine Inspiration from Benin to Bahia (1993).

Her 2002 book, Dressed for Thrills, 100 Years of Halloween Costumes and Masquerade, as well as its several accompanying exhibitions, drew its images from the 500 vintage American costumes and masks in Galembo’s personal collection.

Galembo’s work has appeared at the International Center for Photography, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City; the Albany Institute of History and Art; and at the Smithsonian Institution.

Her photographs are included in numerous public and private collections including the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Art, the Albany Institute of History & Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the Polaroid Corporation Collection, and she has been featured on CNN, National Public Radio, and NBC’s Today. Her honors include a Fulbright Scholar Senior Research Award to Nigeria, and grants from New York State Council for the Arts and New York Foundation for the Arts.